crap i only chew trident white... i did email them and they claimed their gum was vegan (it does have aspartame)

i am just wondering... i know there is the 1 link that talks about aspartame not being vegan but i am not so sure i buy into it... i would think we would have heard of this more often! and i didn't read anything about it not being vegan in skinny bitch or all the non vegan ingredient lists i have looked at... and googleing it doesn't really produce results about it not being vegan... obviously it is bad for u though

Yeah, I can't find anything else online to suggest aspartame wouldn't be vegan. Strange that there would just be the one article. Then again, I guess artificial sweeteners are hardly the backbone of anyone's diet.

Aspartame might not be vegan but I can tell you from my biochemistry courses that it is very easy to synthesize, so it could theoretically be vegan. So it would depend on the least expensive method of production-

Okay I just did some research and here is documentation about the mass production of aspartame and it seems very vegan:

It's certainly not a health food or an environmentally-friendly product, but I hardly think it's all that much worse than white sugar or alcohol or any of the multitude of synthetic chemicals used in food production.

I still fail to see anything worse than white sugar or food colourings or flavourings. I don't see why aspartame specifically gets such a bad rap. What about the varying aromatic esters that go into flavourings? Benzene is a known carcinogen.

I don't mean for this to become an aspartame debate - I've read up on the subject and just obviously don't feel as strongly about it as you do. Agree to disagree.

Thats fine, you can believe whatever you want that is your right. But I know from research that aspartame is a poison and should not be used for human consumption, its simply a fact. I would have to agree that all the other things you listed are bad as well, fructose specifically is a liver toxin and is metabolized essentially the same way alcohol is.

Okay, fair enough - a denatured chemical compound taken from its source can be harmful at certain doses. But if someone wants to have a piece of sugar-free gum, or one fructose-sweetened piece of candy... I don't think that's going to cause them to immediately drop dead, or produce 'substandard' offspring, or turn into Mr. Hyde.

I know this thread is months old, but I just read over on another veg*n forum that Dentyne Fire is (or at least looks) vegan. From the time that post was posted (August 16th, 2009) it also said that the glycerin in it was plant-derived, though the current ingredients list doesn't label glycerin.

I am also not a fan of the artificial sweeteners, colours, flavourings, etc. that I find in gum. I've tried to turn to natural gums, but they are expensive and due to the lack of aforementioned crap the flavour doesn't last very long so you're left chewing on what now tastes like a piece of rubber. Not worth my bucks. I have yet to try the B-12 gums out there, and I'll leave my mind open to them. But for now, I think I'll stick with mints.